North Korean Nuclear-Missile Crisis 1985–

Summary: Evidence that North Korea had developed both nuclear weapons and medium-range rockets capable of delivering warheads to Japan�and prospectively to the United States�prompted long-running, on-again, off-again negotiations involving the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. The aim of the negotiations was to persuade the secretive, isolated North Korean government to dismantle its nuclear fuel program and to suspend development of ballistic missiles in exchange for relieving its isolation and providing food and other aid. Since the talks began in August 2003 they have been marked by a series of agreements, and subsequent North Korean denunciations of those agreements in order to wrest further concessions, notably from the United States. In the most recent round, in April 2009, North Korea declared it was withdrawing from the six-nation talks and would no longer be bound by earlier agreements, in protest against a Security Council resolution condemning a long-range missile test in April 2009 and promising renewed economic sanctions against Pyongyang. In May 2009 North Korea said it had conducted a second underground nuclear test explosion and had test-fired five medium-range missiles despite international condemnation.

Once denounced by the United States as a member of the �axis of evil� (along with Iraq and Iran, in January 2002), the isolated, secretive government of North Korea has claimed to have developed both nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them at least as far as Japan�and potentially to the western United States�while negotiating with five interested powers (the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia) to extract concessions in exchange for promises to dismantle its nuclear program.

Inclusion of North Korea in the �axis of evil� by the administration of President George W. Bush centered around the belief that all three countries were developing nuclear weapons outside the terms of international treaties meant to discourage the spread of such weapons. (North Korea has long been accused of contributing nuclear and missile technology to others, notably Iran.) The American reaction to each of these countries was distinctly different. Whereas Washington invaded Iraq in 2003 and refused to engage in any relations with Iran, the United States did enter into prolonged multilateral negotiations with North Korea in October 2006�the so-called six-party talks. Those negotiations produced a series of agreements by Pyongyang to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for economic aid, and subsequent threats to withdraw from the agreements, either in retaliation for acts by the United States or the United Nations, or in order to achieve further concessions from the United States.

Most recent developments

On April 5, 2009, North Korea launched what it said was a missile meant to send a satellite into space. The launch was deemed a violation of a 2006 Security Council resolution demanding that North Korea abandon development of long-range missiles capable of delivering atomic weapons. Subsequently the Security Council, on April 11, 2009, agreed on a resolution calling for further sanctions against North Korea. (Security Council members agreeing on a resolution condemning the North Korean rocket launch included four of the six countries participating in the talks with North Korea�the United States, Russia, China, and Japan.) In response to the resolution, the Pyongyang regime declared it was restarting the facility used to make nuclear fuel�including fuel for weapons--which it had begun to dismantle in 2008, and that it was permanently withdrawing from the six-party negotiations. A potential complication in efforts to bring North Korea into alignment with international controls was the status and health of its supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, who dropped from public view in August 2008. News reports speculated that he may have suffered a stroke. Days before the contretemps in April 2009 Kim appeared in North Korea, looking somewhat aged and gaunt, and was reelected to a new five-year term of the National Defense Commission, regarded as the most powerful organization in North Korea.

On May 25, 2009, North Korea said it had conducted a second underground test of a nuclear device. International monitors detected a seismic disturbance compatible with such a test. On May 25 and 26 North Korea test-fired five medium-range missiles in defiance of global condemnation, including denunciations of the nuclear test by both China and Russia, two members of the six-party talks who had been relatively sympathetic to North Korea. Media reports in South Korea also said North Korea had restarted a previously closed plant used to enrich uranium. North Korea also threatened to �immediately respond with a powerful military strike� against the South if any of its ships are stopped and searched for weapons of mass destruction under a program called the Proliferation Security Initiative, in which Seoul said it would begin participation.

Analysts were divided over the implications of Pyongyang's announcement in April 2009 that it was permanently leaving the six-party talks. Some analysts noted that North Korea had made similar threats in the past, notably in late 2008 in order to persuade Washington to remove North Korea from its list of sponsors of terrorism, a designation that carries mandatory economic and diplomatic sanctions. Other analysts, quoted in news reports following Pyongyang's announcement, suggested it was impossible to say with certainty whether the threat to resume its nuclear program might be serious. The Security Council resolution that condemned the rocket launch as a violation of a 2006 Council resolution demanding a halt to such tests had been watered down from an original draft proposed by the United States and Japan; the agreement by China, widely regarded as North Korea's main international ally, further emphasized the Pyongyang regime's sense of isolation.

In the wake of the nuclear test and missile test firings in May 2009, some reports suggested that the audience for these activities might have been internal, including the North Korean military and public, in an effort to garner support for Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Kim Jong Un, to succeed him as North Korea's top ruler, possibly after a regency by a brother-in-law, Jang Seong Taek, who was recently promoted to membership on the powerful National Defense Commission. Other analysts suggested the activities were part of a long-standing pattern of belligerence designated to extract concessions or aid from the United States.

Background

The war on the Korean peninsula between the Communist North and non-communist South ended in a truce, but not a permanent peace agreement. The prospect that fighting could resume has long made the peninsula a leading prospective hot-spot.

In the mid-1980s North Korea launched two parallel programs to develop nuclear fuel that could be used in weapons and to build rockets that could deliver them. In 1985 the Islamist government of Iran said it would help finance North Korea's missile program. In the same year North Korea agreed to participate in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, submitting to international inspections, but delayed ratifying an agreement on safeguards until 1992. Since that period, South Korea, Japan, and the United States have led efforts to persuade North Korea to give up both its nuclear weapons program and efforts to develop long-range missiles.

Those diplomatic efforts seemed to gain strength in August 2003 with the beginning of six-party (North Korea, United States, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan) talks that succeeded a prolonged series of bilateral negotiations (U.S.-North Korea and South Korea-North Korea) designed to ease North Korea's diplomatic and economic isolation in exchange for Pyongyang's agreement to participate fully in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in controls and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Both the bilateral negotiations and the six-party talks have long been marked by a pattern of agreements followed by North Korean threats to withdraw from previous accords and to resume its nuclear and missile programs. (For a more complete chronology of related events, see separate Background Information Summary on North Korean Missile/Nuclear Crisis Chronology in this database at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=21257350&site=isc-live.

The ongoing crisis has involved three interlinked elements �nuclear weapons, missiles capable of delivering them to targets in South Korea, Japan, and potentially the United States, and the need for economic aid, including food, for the world's last remaining hard-line Stalinist-era Communist state. The North Korean government has long operated behind a nearly impenetrable shroud of secrecy�most recently with reports in August 2008 that its �Dear Leader� since 1994, Kim Jong-Il, had suffered a debilitating stroke. Kim reappeared in public in January 2009 and again in April 2009, when he was reelected as chairman of the National Defense Commission, widely regarded as the main governing institution in a country dominated by its military. Analysts have long speculated about what role internal politics in Pyongyang might play in the country's development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles and long insistence on almost complete isolation from the outside world. At the same time, some outside observers have occasionally reported evidence of serious food shortages in North Korea, thought to play a role in periodic concessions in exchange for aid.

North Korea announced that it had successfully tested six missiles, including one capable of reaching U.S. Territory; in October, the government said it had conducted an underground test of a plutonium weapon. The first announcement led to a Security Council resolution demanding a halt to further missile tests; the second led to the start of prolonged negotiations among North Korea, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea in which the common theme was persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for economic assistance, including food aid.

U.S. Policy. The United States has pursued different policies towards North Korea over the 30+ years since it announced its development of ballistic missiles, alternating between offering concessions in exchange for North Korea's agreement to halt its missile and nuclear programs and trying to enforce the country's isolation until North Korea makes concessions. Since 1985 North Korea has made steady progress on both weapons and missiles while also achieving a series of concessions, such as receiving international aid and being removed from the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism. Concessions offered by North Korea in return have serially been denounced, most recently in April 2009.

In general the United States has long insisted that North Korea join, and adhere to, international conventions designed to control the spread of nuclear weapons. This policy has included imposing economic sanctions against Pyongyang, as well as diplomatic isolation, as an incentive. The American policy has achieved several notable successes, such as North Korean decisions to join the NPT (1985), to submit to IAEA inspections (1992), and an agreement to dismantle its missile and nuclear programs (1994). These periodic agreements, sometimes accompanied by American concessions such as delivery of food aid or alternative energy sources (i.e. petroleum), have almost always been followed by announcements by North Korea that it was denouncing earlier accords and resuming work on both missiles and weapons. Until the start of the six-party talks in 2003, the United States generally conducted bilateral negotiations with North Korea.

Periodicals

Ajemian, Chris. �Energy for Security.� Nonproliferation Review. 14:2 (July 2007) p. 329. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=25084288&site=isc-live

Cha, Victor and James Kelly. �Pyongyang Blues.� Foreign Affairs 87:2 (March-April 2008) 2p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=31029432&site=isc-live

Davies, Graeme A. M. �Strategic Cooperation, the Invasion of Iraq and the Behaviour of the 'Axis of Evil, 1990-2004.� Journal of Peace Research 45:3 (May 2008) 15p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=31987657&site=isc-live

Friedman, Norman. �Just How Dangerous Is North Korea?� U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings; April 2005, Vol. 131 Issue 4, p. 4. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=16681152&site=isc-live

Jongryn Mo and Hahn, Kyu S. �Public Diplomacy and North Korea Policy: Diverging Effects of U.S. Messages in the United States and South Korea,� Journal of East Asian Studies, May-August 2005, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p. 191. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=17567149&site=isc-live

Jun Sik Bae. �An Empirical Analysis of the Arms Race Between South and North Korea,� Defence & Peace Economics, August 2004, Vol. 15 Issue 4, p. 379. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=13607128&site=isc-live

Lee, Chung-Min. �North Korean Missiles: Strategic Implications and Policy Responses,� Pacific Review, March 2001, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p. 85. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=4781849&site=isc-live

Liebstone, Marvin. �Missiles & the Global Game-Board,� Military Technology, June 2004, Vol. 28 Issue 6, p. 9. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=13874421&site=isc-live

Martin, Curtis H. ��Good Cop/Bad Cop� As a Model for Nonproliferation Diplomacy Toward North Korea and Japan.� Nonproliferation Review, March 2007, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p. 61. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=24232756&site=isc-live

Michishita, Narushige. �Coercing to Reconcile: North Korea's response to US �Hegemony.�� Journal of Strategic Studies, December 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 6, p. 1015. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=23462856&site=isc-live

Mochizuki, Mike M. �Japan Tests the Nuclear Taboo.� Nonproliferation Review 14:2 (July 2007) p. 303. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=25084289&site=isc-live

Newnham, Randall E. �Police in International Studies: �Nukes for Sale Cheap?� Purchasing Peace with North Korea,� International Studies Perspectives, May 2004, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p. 164. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=12627959&site=isc-live

Perry, William J. �Proliferation on the Peninsula: Five North Korean Nuclear Crises.� Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, September 2006, Vol. 607, p. 78. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=22306976&site=isc-live

Squassoni, Sharon A. �Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan: RL31900.� Congressional Research Service: Report. (November 28, 2006). 20p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=23420964&site=isc-live

Suleman, Arsalan M. �Bargaining in the Shadow of Violence: The NPT, IAEA, and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Negotiations.� Berkeley Journal of International Law 26:1 (2008) 48p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=32045800&site=isc-live

On the Web

Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People�s Republic of Korea, Geneva, October 21, 1994. http://www.kedo.org/pdfs/AgreedFramework.pdf

�North Korea�s Nuclear Program, 2005,� Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. http://www.thebulletin.org/article%5Fnn.php?art%5Fofn=mj05norris

Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks Beijing, September 19, 2005, U.S. State Department. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/53490.htm

�North Korea�s Nuclear Weapons Program,� Congressional Research Service, March 25, 2005. http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/46412.pdf

�Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy,� Arms Control Association. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron.asp